In our rock and indie world, generally speaking, those who replicate the norm are chastised, those who deviate from the norm are lauded and those who completely eschew the norm are ignored.

While taking bits from Television and The Velvet Underground and re-imagining them through more distortion and effects is usually seen as a winner, plaintive cookie-cutter indie fails to receive the same amount of praise. But remove either side of the equation and do something completely left of centre, and usually the concoction falls more on the side of deaf ears.

Take Bath-bred quintet Kill it Kid. Since forming in early 2008, the band’s blend of delta blues, contemporary folk and barn-fuelled bluegrass has won plaudits, but even through two singles and a heap of touring, they remain under the radar, so to speak. But now the band is armed with a debut eponymous album, a co-headlining tour with Sparrow and The Workshop and one of the best live shows crossing the country. If any band can take an amalgamation of left field styles and crack the mainstream code, it’s this lot. Better take a listen now.

“The time frame of this whole first album has been incredibly fast,” muses co-lead vocalist and principal songwriter, Chris Turpin. “We were picked up by our label, One Little Indian, four months into being a band when we only had three or four songs. They wanted to get the album out this year, so we got the songs together in about six months. And to do that, we all had to ditch our degrees when we signed up. Yet, for us, while recording the album in such a small time frame has been pretty terrifying, it has also been quite liberating. We had no time to over-analyse or obsess over how it would be received, and we were only out to please ourselves. In some cases even, parts of songs were improvised in the studio.”

So, what does one get with Kill it Kid. To start, the band is fronted by two astounding vocalist, syrup-soaked Chris Turpin and husky-howled Stephanie Ward. Turpin is a modern recreation of delta blues, flecked with bits of Gomez, Antony Hegarty and Wild Beasts, while Ward recalls Lucinda Williams.

In addition, the band is buttressed through fiddles and slide guitar, rolling through hills of Appalachian waltz, modern folk and good old-fashioned rock ‘n’ roll in its interpretation of the blues. Every song on their debut is a triumph, whether it’s the bluegrass stomp of ‘Heaven Never Seemed So Close’ or vocal showstopper ‘Fool For Loving You’.

“The romanticism of the American Midwest was very appealing to me at the time some of the songs were written,” explains Turpin. “We took influences from unfashionable performers like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and June Carter and Blind Willie McTell (whom the band is named after) and Ruth Willis, as they all felt relevant to Stephanie and I, but took care to avoid kitsch. The songs themselves centre on love and loss, though not in a typical downbeat way, as we do try and let them take a harsh macabre twist.”

The album was recorded and mixed by Ryan Hadlock in Seattle, in the same studio frequented by Fleet Foxes and the Foo Fighters. Set in the woods, the wooden cabin/studio inherently influenced the songs, giving Turpin and company a new perspective on how to blend their version of the traditional. “The studio was a three story wooden cabin in the forest with a stream flowing out the back,” adds Turpin.

“The cabin was filled with books, warping cylinder records, religious icons and prints, Resoglass record players, trinkets from the day of the dead, oil paintings of horses and artwork of the bands that have worked there. It was a special place to lay down the roots. Plus, we barely used reverb on the album. Ryan felt he could hear elements of 1950s rock ‘n’ roll in our music, so we opted to use a tape delay on our voices rather than traditional echo. To me, it gave it a Sun Records vibe.”

But as good as the album is, Kill it Kid flourish on stage. Every song is a modern barn dance of sorts, culminating in one hell of a rock ‘n’ roll show. “A Kill it Kid show nowadays is a raw, youthful explosion of energy on stage,” says Turpin. “We absolutely love to play live, so the plan around this release is to tour, tour and tour more, which I suppose is our main challenge now, because we are so new. We have been amazed at people’s responses to us at shows so far, plus I think the record makes a lot more sense if you see the live show.”